The mysterious and elusive Click Through Ratio known to most webmasters who utilize Google Adsense as “CTR”.
A question I get asked a lot is “What is a good CTR?” Although this question gets asked a lot it’s hard to ever get a straight answer due to the fact that there are so many variables involved.
The Variables
The first variable has to do with your type of website- forum, blog, social, video, audio websites are all quite different and depending on your niche you may get more or less clicks depending.
The second variable is what kind of content you provide and what type of user this draws. A website featuring articles on automobile repairs would probably draw gearheads who if fixing or modding their cars and reading your articles to do so, probably are in the market for car parts. If a website that has killer deals happens to pop up while they are reading your article they are a lot more likely to click that than say an article for Seattle Coupons which shows someone having their nails done. Google is usually pretty good at showing the correct type of ads for a particular website although when you first start out with Google Adsense they might be a bit off on occasion.
The third variable is where you have the ads located- do you have them easily accessible to the reader? Are they included along with the text or off on the sidebar where the users eyes are sometimes yet rarely drawn? One of the worst decisions I ever made was locating my ads in the sidebar. Although they occasionally get hits, by moving my ads into my blog posts I increased by CTR ten-fold.
The fourth and final variable has to do with the color of your ads. You want the reader to enjoy your article while also possibly enjoying a few of your Google Adsense ads as well. By clicking your ads they are supporting your website while at the same time enjoying a potential shopping experience. It helps to blend the ads in along with your content and color is the key. Make sure your Adsense ads font color is set to the exact same as your content. If your blog has a white background with green text and blue links make sure that your Adsense ads are also configured with these same settings. Not only will you improve your CTR, but your page will blend better and appear much more professional.
Now that you read all the variables and the disclaimers you still want to know “What’s a good CTR?” From personal experience in my field, a good Click Through Ratio is around 1-3%. Granted, I won’t be making much money from Adsense with this rate unless I draw a substantial amount of traffic which brings us to our final point.
Content is King. You may have heard this many times before, but take this to heart. If I didn’t have this content you are reading now would you even be here? Now that I have you here I can display some ads in hope you’ll enjoy some of the deals (even just briefly) so that I can make a little profit as well. Make sure you are writing good content and have a good SEO system. If you’re not attracting any traffic or only 10-20 hits a day you are doing something wrong. Even if you get traffic from Facebook, Twitter, and the search engines- you must have good content to keep the user on your site and keep them coming back. There are only a few websites that I myself frequent on the net and it all has to do with content.
What is your website name and URL? Post it below in comments, I would love to visit and take a look. Perhaps I can give you some ideas on how to improve your CTR, then we can post the results here in this article so that you gain free promotion from my blog while benefiting from the improvements we made to increase your Click Through Ratio.
- google adsense
- adsense CTR
- how to increase adsense ctr - technicheblog
- The mysterious and elusive Click Through Ratio known to most webmasters who utilize Google Adsense as “CTR” A question I get asked a lot is “What is a good CTR
- scoreland
I just started my blog and am beginning to promote it to get a higher CTR.
This was an interesting article… I am just starting out on my own blog… I had about 75 hits last month, but hope to increase that hopefully this upcoming month. I’m interested in boosting my CTR….
75 hits in an entire month is honestly pretty poor. To instantly boost that number to 75 a day or 75 a minute post heavily on similar topics all over the internet. Be honest and get involved in conversations on Facebook and Twitter about things you are passionate about and make sure to link back to your website.
Follow my advice on top 10 ways to get traffic to your website and How to SEO, these are all available on NERDTREK.com
When your numbers skyrocket let me know exactly what you did and how those numbers improved. I would love to hear how your success goes!
I would say Good Luck, but it’s not luck, it’s a TON of hard work and diligence.
Thanks. My CTR rate is very low; i’m gonna try ads within the post for the visibility that offers.
nice info friend….thanks for sharing….it’s help me to do better in adsense….
http://www.chutkulesms.com This is My Site please visit and give me some suggestions to how to earn good earning.
At first glance your website looks like a spam website. There appear to be many ads and my first instinct is to back out. Also, the color scheme and fonts are very unprofessional and unappealing. Before you worry about ad clicks you need to make your website more appealing.
1. Find a new theme. Spend hours or days if you have to looking online. Find out what colors are most appealing to people and what mood a certain color puts most people in. Make sure the fonts look killer.
2. If you are a graphic designer make an amazing albeit simple title for your blog. Use a unique font and effect but make sure it is bold and legible. If you are not a graphic designer become one and start learning Photoshop. You cannot make it without having specific skills and photoshop and HTML are both must haves!
3. Eliminate one sidebar so you only have a single sidebar. Keep the bar on the right since people read left to right they are more likely to read your ads this way.
4. Put adsense ads in amongst your posts and text, NOT in the sidebar. Save the sidebars for affiliate advertising and make it attractive. Put affiliate ads that would fit the type of people visiting your website. If the affiliate provider doesn’t have something you like than make your own and ace their link over it. Email them to ask permission to do this though. For some bigger websites it’s against their TOS.
Start with those changes and please come back to let me know if that helps. Also, anyone else who uses this advice. I would LOVE a follow-up and hear about your site. Feel free to post your URL so nerdtrek.com can send you free traffic!
I get about 300 -400 pageviews a day and not many clicks ,i like conspiracy theories and my favorite ones i put up on my blog ,can you tell me how i can improve my blog , maybe get a few more clicks on ads ,im not very good on computers so any help is greatly appreciated .
First I would suggest using the h1 tag for your headers and make them more visible. Also shorten your title to something people will actually search for and is relevant to the material you are posting.
If you are posting about an asteroid that was a near miss to earth maybe ASTEROID NARROWLY MISSES EARTH would be a better title and attract more people searching and grab the attention of your readers.
Check the grammar on your site. I found numerous spelling and grammatical errors in just the first few sentences. Not only is this a turn off, but Google doesn’t even place websites with numerous spelling errors in it’s results. Fix those however you can- have a friend proofread, do a spell/grammar check, anything you can do to remedy that problem.
Post links to your article on Facebook & Twitter, and visit similar blogs posting links back to your article in their comments. Don’t just leave spam though, leave quality comments and people will be more likely to check out your site and article.
CONTENT IS KING
Read my other articles on How to get more visitors to your blog for additional tools and tricks!
You must WORK HARD. I spend hundreds of hours a month on my website with little return, but it is building and a year from now I might actually be making some serious money. I notice that when I spend a good chunk of my time promoting it pays off in the long run and keeps paying off as long as my links stay on the net!
Good luck!
Hi Jonathan,
I have been blogging for the past three years and have had some success using adsense on my site. Based on your article I fall within the 1-3% but I would still like to increase this.
I would like you to check my site Simply Trini Cooking and point out what areas I could improve on to raise my CTR.
Thank you.
Your ads look well placed. How many visitors do you get per day? I would recommend working on increasing the amount of people visiting your site as this will increase the number of clicks you receive. Do you advertise at all? Do you post on forums? How do you spread the name of your website around? Have you read my other articles? Have you visited my other blog http://JGNweb.com ? That’s where I give all my secrets on how I make a living blogging online. If you’re looking for ways to increase your visitors and keep them coming back read my articles there. It will take you some time to get through them all and it is work running websites, but you get to work from home and be your own boss. What could be better than that? See you at JGNweb.com perhaps!
Thank you I will check out the site and do some reading. I do agree that it is a lot of work since I’ve been doing it for three years. It really requires focus but as you said the rewards are nice.
Oh! because of competition I prefer to write you about my visitors. look out for an email
NIce one jonathan..could you please have a look at my site… http://juruteracabok.blogspot.com
I think that my content is good enough as I write it all based on my experience.. I was hoping for traffic from google for keywords “offshore in malaysia” for this post http://juruteracabok.blogspot.com/2011/12/offshore-in-malaysia-pictures.html
How can I improve the ranking for this post?…google keyword tools said the keywords has 8100 monthly searches with relatively low competition… That’s why I post about it
If I generate backlinks from top search result websites for that particular keywords, Will it affect my serp?I hope you can hep me
Please check my blog to point the flaw if there’s any….
Wow! I would love a 3% click through rate!
One question: do you get a higher CTR with black/gray headline text that blends in rather than a blue link colored headline?
My experience on my website for community college transfer students has shown that a blue link headline works best for me
Thankyou for the advice.
http://Www.thetechsniper.co.UK, could you suggest any ways to improve it? ( I use joomla)
Hi Jonathan,
I wonder if you may want to give me a little advice about Ads placement on my website build-some-muscle.com.
Based on your experience, what works better between:
Text/Images/Text and Images Ads
Ads below title vs. Ads below the first paragraph
Different Ad formats
1, 2, or 3 ad units per page
AdSense only vs. AdSense + other ads
Thanks for your time!